So last night when she's supposed to be "sleeping like a champ", Elsa took her socks off and threw them and her penguin on the floor. Thud. It was the first time she even tried to climb out of her crib. And she made it up and over with a crash landing and no tears, just waiting for someone to come in and help her and her penguin out of a jam. We got her settled back in and ten minutes later she was up and over the wall again.

She's been pulling out all the stops at bedtime: "kiss Rody", "more cuddles", "another book". Is there something that happens around 21 months that makes the little ones put up the fight at bedtime?

Most playgrounds suck. They're either too big or too small, too hard or too easy, and almost always grow out of nowhere in the middle of some lot or former corn field with no consideration of the surrounding environment. There are a few exceptions, of course, like the Isamu Noguchi-designed Playscapes in Atlanta's Piedmont Park, and Robert Royston's clever Mitchell Park playspace in Palo Alto. But, unfortunately, most are not designed. They are ordered from catalogs. Not so with the Daubeney School's playground in London.

For one week during March 2000 the grounds at Daubeney School were transformed into The Experimental Playground Project giving all 485 pupils a chance to try out ideas and experiment with the shape and dynamics of their everyday environment. What was learned in one week of observation and play led to the complete design and construction of The Experimental Playground, which includes an abstract zebra/highway/dazzle pattern of playground markings; a mound and look-out post; a steel mirror wall; a forest of poles, rotating platforms and moving islands; an extra long wooden bench and storage; a shelter with windows, steel mirror, lights in the floor, orange boulders.

Alma Buscher started at the bauhaus in 1922. And like all female students, was pushed out of the way, into the weaving studio. But after a few lousy assignments, she convinced Walter Gropius to allow her into the woodcarving workshop, where she developed toys and other utilitarian objects. She showed them what's what at a 1923 bauhaus exhibition with her design for a children's nursery in George Muche and Adolf Meyer's Haus am Horn. Her design was important for the bauhaus-ian principles it demonstrated, but also because the room and its furniture was specifically designed for children, at a child's scale and for a child's needs (well, except for the sharp corners and rock-hard floor). Her nursery rejected the notion of children as small adults who needed nothing more than miniature versions of adult furniture in their own rooms.

Her building blocks were among the best selling products mass produced at the bauhaus, and over 80 years later, are still being sold today. Alma Buscher married Werner Siedhoff in 1926, had two children and moved her family to Weimar with the bauhaus. She then designed two paper building kits for Otto-Maier Verlag Ravensburger: Segelschiff (sailboat) and Krahn (crane). She died in 1944 during an air raid.

top: abstract furniture for the Haus am Horn nursery (photo by esperantonia and also seen here on Daddytypes, from back when I would fill Greg's inbox with all sorts of everything before I had my own blog). bottom: spread from unknown (because I can't remember) book showing a 1924 design for a changing table and a 1923 set of building (a boat) blocks; and another view of the nursery at Haus am Horn.

Peer Clahsen designed this etagen-puppenhaus (l) for Naef around 1970. I'm going to say he also had something to do with this one for Creative Playthings (r), who frequently collaborated with Kurt Naef.

Update: Turns out it wasn't Clahsen or anyone at Creative Playthings. The original open-plan dollhouse was designed in 1968-9 by _____ ________. I'll fill in the blanks once I make the rounds on eBay. ;)